Kid Hum drops two new albums and a new video

Kid Hum (aka Dylan Avery) has been keeping a low profile these days, lurking in the shadows and only showing his face periodically to gift the masses with new music. At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, he dropped The Beet Tape, and the new joint comes hot…

Review: Itchy-O at 3 Kings Tavern, 12/31/11

ITCHY-O @ 3 KINGS TAVERN | 12/31/11 A number of people at this show had no idea what Itchy-O was about. So when one of the uniformed cadre of musicians, his arms lit up with a short row of lights, went running through 3 Kings just prior to the performance,…

With No More Wasted Days, Places is enjoying a new phase

It’s tough to single out a distinct voice when speaking to the men of Places. There are seven guys in the band, and they frequently talk over one another. But it’s not the sheer numbers that make isolating a single member a chore. It’s the fact that they each offer…

The Wailers

Someone should really make a movie about the saga of the Wailers. Founded by reggae legends Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1963, the seminal reggae band and its various members have influenced every style of reggae imaginable, from roots and rocksteady to dancehall and ska. It has…

Shoppers

Noise punk — or whatever all-encompassing term you prefer — is nothing new. That said, any band that sounds like it’s bursting with a desperate energy and has the inspiration and drive to engage inner turmoil head-on is always going to be relevant. Shoppers, from Syracuse, New York, embodies that…

Cattle Decapitation

There is some irony in the fact that three of the four current members of a band named Cattle Decapitation are staunch vegetarians — but there is also awesomeness here. The same goes for the longtime death-metal act’s songs, a rowdy and riveting back catalogue that decries animal abuse, genocide…

Mudhoney

Although Mark Arm is sometimes credited with coining the term “grunge,” all of his bands have been informed by a keen sense of humor as well as the great raw sound of the garage-rock bands of the Pacific Northwest. Forming Green River in 1984 with friend and guitarist Steve Turner…

Music fan’s “Drake” tattoo takes celebrity worship to a new level

When crazy people do crazy things — especially if those crazy things are violent or harmful — there is an unfortunate tendency to look for some external impetus for the craziness. Like when Drowning Pool got scapegoated for the Tucson killings last year, or when the Colorado Springs police openly…

Wandering Monks

Wandering Monks is a duo whose lyrics embody the rebellion present in so much of early hip-hop. The two tackle difficult subjects like war and peace over strong production, making their anti-big-money lyrics shine. While the content is serious, it gets a bit redundant over the course of the record’s…

Chimney Choir

On Chimney Choir’s debut EP — titled (feather) and graced with a block-print feather graphic on the cover — the trio offered five songs that were all keepers. At the same time, those tunes left the listener wanting more. It didn’t take long for the act to deliver, following that…

Mariposa

It’s likely that Madeline Johnston didn’t actually hole herself up for the winter with only her private thoughts and the company of a crate of records and books while writing this album. Just the same, these eight tracks have that sort of feel — a kind of lonely, minimalist, contemplative…

Genre Theory

Judging from the extremely dense, seemingly arbitrary and slightly pretentious narrative spun on the band’s bio, including the overwrought descriptors they’ve attached to themselves individually as players (bassist Shawn Briardy, for instance, is responsible for “thickening undertones” and “low end theorems”), the men of Genre Theory have clearly put a…

Lightlooms has jelled with its Synaptic Sea EP

Meaghan Lillis met Josh Guisinger while the two were students at Auraria. Lillis was studying piano performance, and Guisinger was an art student. They had run into each other at Radiohead and Björk concerts, and then at the bookstore in Westminster where Lillis worked. They bonded over music and decided…

Hugh Cleal spins January 6 at Bar Standard

Last year, Full Flavor Fridays brought some of the best national (and international!) talent out there to its underground weekly event, and the trend is continuing this year. For its first 2012 headliner, Full Flavor is bringing us Hugh Cleal, a Detroit native who cut his teeth on violin and…